Come, it is time to keep your appointment with our October issue, celebrating 40 years of rising renown of The Wicker Man. Born of the dry taste for elaborate games and wind-ups of advertising partners Robin Hardy and Peter Shaffer, boasting Christopher Lee’s own-declared greatest performance as pagan misty-island magnate Lord Summerisle, and sitting on the fold of pre-Christian Celtic folklore and post-60s hippie social entryism, this “Citizen Kane of horror” must be, as Vic Pratt explores in our cover feature Long Arm of the Lore, “the most splendid example of British ‘folk horror’, in which a remote regional community, and ancient customs and archaic superstitions, dismissed or marginalised by clever-clogs city folk, wreak havoc upon forces of modernity, order and authority.”

It also comes with a release history as unlikely as its on-screen scenario, perhaps deliberately sabotaged by its conglomerate owners, released on the bottom-half of a double bill with Don’t Look Now and soon shredded into countless variants, with longer release prints mysteriously vanishing and original negatives rumoured to be lying under the M3 motorway. Meanwhile American genre fans and Bible Belt conservatives alike embraced the film and its mystique. Pre-digital elusiveness burnished its cult legend; Alex Cox opened his seminal Moviedrome show with it, Nicolas Cage remade it, and now we have an imminent release of a new, final director’s cut. Pratt explores this occult story in conversation with director Hardy, who also provides us with original sketches of key scenes in the film.

From a distant Scottish island to the shimmering vortex of modern Roman high society: with The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino probes the contemporary dolce vita through the wryly cynical eyes of journalist-flâneur and Gatsby-esque party host Jep Gambardella (Sorrentino regular Tony Servillo) as he bobs between nuns, cardinals and strippers in search of his forsaken talent and, perhaps, humanity. Pasquale Iannone celebrates the director’s rapturously stylish way with the crane, the Steadicam and the soundtrack – and delves deeper, past the echoes of Sorrentino’s Italian forbears, past Scorsese and Buñuel, to the unexpected findings of French misanthrope Céline.

And from that caress to the punch: Slavoj Žižek is back to breach our illusions (and delusions) in The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, a follow-up to his 2006 sally The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema in which he uncovered the libidinal subtexts of classics from Hitchcock to Coppola. Working again with director Sophie Fiennes – “my Leni Riefenstahl” – his new film scales up to examine our social presuppositions and pathologies in films from Taxi Driver to The Sound of Music. But what is ‘the Big Other’? Sam Davies gains an audience, and time for all of two questions.

Time – its ineluctable passage and the marks it leaves – is both subject and tool of James Benning, the American filmmaker and teacher whose legendarily patient, formally rigorous landscape cinema is finally coming to DVD, even as he has moved on from his beloved 16mm celluloid into the land of digital experimentation. In this month’s Sight & Sound Interview, he talks about manipulation, reality, liberty and the fantasy of watching paint dry on film with Nick Bradshaw. Just don’t call his cinema ‘slow’.

Also this month: David Thomson on the stealthy rise of Eddie Marsan, character actor extraordinaire; Nick James on the late Claude Sautet’s directorial debut Classe tous risques, a long-shunned French film noir starring the great Lino Ventura that now looks a sleek and remarkably hard-boiled influence on Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime films; Kieran Evans on his frank Liverpool transgressive love story Kelly + Victor; Olaf Möller on cult German director Roland Klick; Mark Cousins on falling and weightlessness on film; Hannah McGill on the society of the spectacles… and much, much more.

Sight & Sound is now available in digital editions for Apple iOS, Android and Kindle Fire as well as computer desktops. Scroll this gallery to browse this issue’s section breakdown.

RUSHES: Mikey Please draws inspiration from Richard Williams and Norman McLaren; London Film Festival highlights; Hannah McGill on the society of the spectacles; Kelly + Victor’s Kieran Evans; Mark Cousins on falling for film

Forty years on, despite studio maulings and disappearing prints, The Wicker Man still exercises an uncanny grip on the imagination. Director Robin Hardy remembers the making and marring of a pagan classic. By Vic Pratt

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of movies? Slavoj Žižek knows – and he won’t stop talking about it. In The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology he uncovers more dark secrets from the dream factory. By Sam Davies

Claude Sautet’s Classe tous risques was criminally neglected in the fuss over the nouvelle vague. Half a century on, it emerges as an authentically tough gangster classic. By Nick James

The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino’s ambitious odyssey through decadent Roman high society, shows the director to be one of modern cinema’s most confident stylists. By Pasquale Iannone

Watchful, humble, helplessly professional, Eddie Marsan has become one of those actors who directors just love to cast. By David Thomson

The American filmmaker and teacher, legendary for his formal rigour and devotion to 16mm, talks about digital technology, ‘slow’ art, and manipulating the image in the interests of reality. By Nick Bradshaw

WIDE ANGLE: Olaf Möller appraises forgotten German director Roland Klick; Charlie Fox on the wicked enchantments of Kenneth Anger’s soundtracks; Bryony Dixon on the power of 100 at Cinema Ritrovato; John Beagles on three female Scottish artists

HOME CINEMA: Peter William Evans welcomes two lesser-known Douglas Sirk melodramas; Michael Brooke on a rare appearance by Bill Douglas in front of the camera, plus 15 other new releases

BOOKS: Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close Up; Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies; Written on the Wind (BFI Classics); The Desiring Image: Gilles Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema

ENDINGS: Dan Callahan unravels the final moments of Coppola’s The Rain People

Features

Cover feature: Long arm of the lore

Mauled by the studio, obsessed over by fans, deconstructed by academics, remade with Nicolas Cage – yet the pagan British weirdness of The Wicker Man remains fresh. As The Final Cut is released, director Robin Hardy recalls the making of a myth. By Vic Pratt.

Mind the gaps

In The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, Slavoj Žižek once again stares into the abyss between what filmmakers want to say and what they are actually saying – with assistance from his ‘Leni Riefenstahl’, Sophie Fiennes. By Sam Davies.

Keep on running

On release, Claude Sautet’s gangster film Classe tous risques was lumped in with the despised ‘cinéma de papa’. Half a century on, fans of authentically tough noir may find themselves asking: ‘Who’s the daddy?’ By Nick James.

Journey to the end of the night

In The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino tracks his journalist protagonist through decadent Roman high society. But far more than a Fellini tribute act, the Neapolitan director is a richly individual stylist and moralist By Pasquale Iannone.

A ghost in the machine

Clerk, boxer, policeman, lowlife, a Stepney-born Peter Lorre and a Fool (or a Lear) in waiting: one way or another, Eddie Marsan is taking Hollywood by stealth. By David Thomson.

The S&S Interview: James Benning

Long famous – or at least legendary – for the formal rigour and patience of his landscape films, and for his devotion to 16mm, the American filmmaker and teacher has now embraced digital technology and is even allowing a DVD release of his work. He talks about manipulation, reality, liberty, and the pleasures of watching paint dry with Nick Bradshaw.

Regulars

Editorial

State of mind

Rushes

A series of stumbles

How one young animator drew rich inspiration from the divergent yet complementary styles of Norman McLaren and Richard Williams. By Mikey Please.

The BFI London Film Festival

With vampires and folkies, stories from Mexico, the Philippines and Yorkshire, the BFI LFF 2013 is as multifarious as ever.

Object lesson: Dramatic spectacles

The wearing of glasses in films, particularly broken ones, suggests vulnerability and the primacy of intellect over physicality. By Hannah McGill.

The five key Gilbert Taylor films

The great British cinematographer, who died in August at the age of 99, enjoyed an illustrious career lasting more than half a century.

Reviews

Films of the month

+ other releases reviewed in this issue

About Time
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
The Artist and the Model
Austenland
A Belfast Story
Borrowed Time
Elysium
Emperor
Filth
For Those in Peril
42
The Great Beauty/La grande bellezza
Hannah Arendt
Harrigan
Hawking
How I Live NowIn a World…
In the Name of/W imie…
InRealLife
Insidious: Chapter 2
Jadoo
Justin and the Knights of Valour
Kick-Ass 2
A Magnificent Haunting/Magnifica presenza
Metro Manila
Mister John
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
R.I.P.D.
Rush
The Smurfs 2
Thanks for Sharing
The To Do List
2 Guns
We’re the Millers
Winter of Discontent/El sheita elli fat

Home cinema

DVD features

The outsiders: Films by Douglas Sirk

Two overlooked Douglas Sirk films emerge from the shadows to reveal typically powerful portraits of benighted lives. By Peter William Evans.

Rediscovery: Sleepwalker

Bill Douglas’s appearance in the nightmarish horror-satire is as effective as it is unexpected and unsettling, says Michael Brooke.

+ other new DVDs reviewed in this issue

The Adventures of Prince Achmed
The Brontë Sisters
Cloak and Dagger
The Damned
Films Starring Bette Davis
Deranged
The Driver
Help!
Hemingway & Gellhorn
The Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume Three
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Paul Taylor Dance Company in Paris
The Sun in a Net